Aggressively seeking extra shots of annoyance

Unresolved pain, trauma and grief create a well of negative emotion we drag around through space time. We have a very capable high functioning monkey mind that aggressively tries to resolve these issues.

We seek to recreate on an emotional level the prior incidents that maimed us and somehow resolve them to our past selves satisfaction. If we have been profoundly abandoned by the death of someone we seek abandonment in its various forms. If we feel unwanted in childhood we create situations filled with longing and attach to unavailable relationships. And so on.

Recently I gave a young friend of mine a blank journal titled “Things that Annoy me.” I asked him to write down all his annoyances. He was gleeful in this task as he so aggressively seeks annoyance his life is a series of dramatic meltdowns over seemingly insignificant things.

As we reviewed his week full of frustrating bad experiences, he began to laugh and commented about the genuine annoyance he felt at always feeling annoyed. I commented that it created the perfect feed back loop for his souls work, trying to self soothe and somehow magically relive and resolve his original trauma: the recent death of his mother that he refused to acknowledge or grieve.

I confided that I had similar behaviors around recreating dramas or relationships in order to feeling longing and then attempting to resolve the bad feelings by “fixing “ the relationship. The way I resolved the perfect loop of negative feedback was to examine and accept the original failure to connect.

He indicated that he wasn’t ready to give up being annoyed and wrote my name down in his journal and underlined it twice.

I smiled at the perfection of my own loop in the interaction.

I was sure our souls wouldn’t give up trying to resolve our respective traumas. And, I am sure my little friend will have ample opportunities for annoyance in his field of vigilance.

As for my part, I have decided longing is a complete waste of time and energy and have determined feeling loved works better for me. But I have had 55 more years than my little friend to come this eureka moment and he seems like a much quicker study.

Honestly I was tickled to be included in his journal; with a double underline no less.

“That’ll be an extra shot of annoyance for you young man.”